


Lost Boy Blues

by Fanny Adams (Dargie)



Category: Still Crazy
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:19:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dargie/pseuds/Fanny%20Adams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hughie had always looked after Brian.  He always would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Boy Blues

For almost as long as I'd been a road dog, I'd been playin' Nanny to the Lovell brothers which God knows was a job for an idiot – y'either started daft or ended up that way. Keith spent so much time courting death it was a wonder he made it past the quarter century mark before he rushed out of this life with only a stoned groupie to mark his passing. "Hughie," he'd have said to me, "It's m'own stupid fault for goin' out with a whimper instead of a bang." Keith found everything funny, even the inevitability of death.

Brian was another story entirely, though in those early days he laughed a lot, usually at the most inappropriate moments. But he didn't find anything amusing about death, especially not after his brother left him. After that it was as if death was the enemy and the only way Brian knew to fight it was to tweak its nose, poor wee guy. Everyone told him it was a bad strategy, but he was beyond listening.

In the end, even Karen left him which surprised us all. She went off with some wanker who got her pregnant, then walked out on her, leaving her with a daughter and a stack of unpaid bills. Oh, aye, I keep up with them all though they don't know it. I do it for Brian's sake; he may not want to be found, but he does want to know what his former band mates are up to. I'm still playing Nanny to him the way I always did in the days before Keith died, only now I don't have to clean up the vomit or walk him around all night so he won't die in his sleep, or keep him from self-destructing. I just have to stand between him and the world the way I always did . It's what I'm best at, if I'm bein' totally honest.

And sometimes, just every once in a while, he comes into my bed and reminds me that the universe is occasionally generous even to the like of me. I suppose some folks might find it a bad bargain, but I think Brian is my link to a place I can never go, so I take my miracles where I find them. It's not as if I ever expected to feel this way about any man, but a few decades on the music circuit will persuade all but the prissiest gits that sex with another guy isn't quite the mortal sin it's cracked up to be.

It was after Karen had left him, and he was living in that big, empty house that he hated so much; God knows why he hung on to it for so long. I usually stopped by a few times a week to bring him food because I knew he wouldn't eat if he was left on his own and I didn't like him being there alone all the time. He'd fired all the servants a few months earlier, said they were really spirits of dead gods and they were giving him food of the gods to make him immortal, only he didn't want to be immortal, he wanted to be with Keith again. Bugger it, I never had that much fun, even droppin' acid.

One night though, it was pissin' down rain when I showed up with a few bags of Chinese take-away, and Brian told me to climb in the bloody window to fool the guard dog (by which he meant the big stone bugger right outside the door; always hated that pooch m'self.) There was no talkin' to the bastard when he got into one of his states so not only did I get soaked and muddy tramping about behind the privet hedges, but I ended up with an order of egg foo yung on m'trews. I undressed, washed everything, and Brian and I skipped dinner and sat in his bedroom smoking dope and drinking brandy in front of a roaring fire. It didn't take long before I was warm again and my clothes, which we hung from the mantel, started to dry.

It didn't seem extraordinary, being wrapped in a duvet, lying on Brian's big bed, talking about music. Back when the band was young we'd sometimes get squeezed in two and three to a bed, and nobody thought much of it unless they were bunking with Beano who even then was as scrofulous a sack of shite as ever stank up a tour bus. That night, though, it was Brian and m'self getting' toasted inside and out. I told him I was on my way to do a tour with Queen starting the next day and I was listing the dates for him out of my prodigious memory when he said, "Hughie, do you love me?"

"Och, aye," I said, "Y'know I do. If I didn't why would I spend so much time tyin' yer shoelaces and washin' behind yer ears?"

I intended to make him laugh but he gave me one of those Brian smiles, one of those sweet, complex smiles full of affection and a little pity, I always thought. "I feel sorry for anyone who does," he said softly. Now, neither Lovell had ever been slow in the self-esteem department no matter what you might hear these days, so it took me by surprise to hear him say that and I told him so. Actually I think I said, "What're y'on about y'daft bugger?" and "Is there any more brandy?"

He got up to get another bottle – Christ, he had his alcohol and drugs delivered, but I had to bring him food – and when he came back he seemed a little more light hearted, so I let it go. I didn't want to get into a heavy scene that night; I wanted to leave feeling like he might still be there when I got back.

"When do you leave?"

"I have to be at the airport about four tomorrow afternoon."

"Packed?"

"'course I am. Have you ever known me to be unprepared?"

"Never." He smiled again, and this time I saw the elfin Brian, the irresistible one, according to Karen. "You're probably perfect, Hughie."

"Ah, bugger off," I told him, not quite understanding where he was going with all this.

"It's still pouring," he said, looking out over the acres of woodland he loved to get lost in. "Why don't you stay the night?"

I thought about it for a minute or two, and then shrugged. "If it's all right w'you, that's what I'd prefer. I hate drivin' in weather like this. I don't want t'die before a tour; that would be bad planning."

Then he kissed me.

It wasn't a friendly kiss, or maybe what I mean is that it was too friendly. Either way I knew it wasn't the sort of affection I was used to from him. It pulled me up short because it was all new to me in the practical sense, though by that time I had the theory down cold. Besides, this wasn't something Brian and I should be getting up to.

"What's wrong, Hughie?"

"I don't think it's a good idea what you're doin'."

"And what am I doing?" he asked. He was a good deal too close for my comfort. I could smell the brandy on his breath, the sweat on his skin and the sweet smoke tangled in his curls. There was something wild about the boy that night.

"Yer tryin' to seduce me," I accused. God but I sounded like a prat. Self-righteousness can be a serious Presbyterian failing. "Aren't you?"

"Do I have to?"

Well by that time I'd drunk enough brandy and smoked enough dope that the question didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. Have to? No he didn't fookin' have to and I told him so.

I can't believe how stupid alcohol and dope make me.

It was while we were exploring each other's dental work that a shred of common sense resurfaced. Brian was at best a fragile creature, delicate and iridescent as a dragonfly inside and out, and I was a great Scots workhorse. Being so close to all that angelic beauty just made me a wee bit nervous, I pulled away and told him it had to stop.

Then the tears began to roll down Brian's face, and good old Hughie lost his rag. I promised him anything if he'd just stop, even a non-stop shag until I absolutely had to leave for the airport the next day.

"I hate it when you're sad," I grumped as he blew his nose.

"I'm always sad."

"That's why I'm so bad-tempered." It made him smile.

"Hughie, I'm lonely. I miss Keith and Karen so much. And the band…"

I said something stupid and callous about the human condition because he pulled away and curled up tight, arms wrapped around his knees and chin resting on them. He looked like a stone figure from some gothic cathedral.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," I told him, and lit another joint.

"I know."

"I just mean y'don't have t'sell yersel' for a little human warmth, Bri." I passed him the dope and he just looked at it and handed it back.

"Pay no mind t'me, I'm in a heterosexual panic and behaving badly." He relaxed and began to laugh, and I felt that familiar warmth that comes on me when I see him shake loose of all the weight he carries. Ah, fuck it, I thought, what damn difference could it make? So I clipped off the burning end into the ashtray, and set it all aside in favor of an unfamiliar take on a familiar addiction. It'd been a long time since I'd tried to live without Brian in my life and I wasn't sure I could do it – not forever, not permanently. The withdrawal pain alone would be killing.

I was on seriously unfamiliar ground, stoned stupid and wondering why the hell it had taken me so long to realize how in-love with Brian I truly was. I doubt I could ever want another man like that even now that I've been well and truly broken to it, but with Brian it was simple. It felt so right and so natural that even m'self-righteous Presbyterian side couldn't object too strenuously. I just let m'self do all the familiar things, all the things I'd have done with a girl adapting them for unfamiliar terrain. A good road dog is flexible after all. I found m'sel on top of the sweet lad, roarin' out my appreciation (the girls seem to like that sort of thing and I'm a noisy bugger at heart) when it penetrated my drug and lust-addled brain that Brian was, to put it delicately, not innocent of the love of men. I deflated pretty comprehensively out of disappointment and feelings of real inadequacy and got up from the bed to go for a pee. Well the truth was that I thought I was goin' to disgrace m'self in front of him by havin' a wee bit of a weep over not having been the first and all. I was drunk and stoned enough to be sloppy and stupid, but not so drunk I didn't know that I'd have to be killin' m'self over it as soon as I sobered up. But I stayed in the loo too long. He knew I was upset.

"Hughie… What's wrong? You've been crying?"

Explain away a red, blotchy nose sometime, I dare you.

"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have forced you into anything." He looked genuinely stricken.

"You didn't make me do anything. I wanted… I thought we…"

"What?"

Might as well just say it. If I didn't it would hang between us forever. "I thought it'd be new for both of us," I admitted. So I'm not very articulate in emotional moments; Christ I was raised to ignore anything up to and including major organ failure.

It took him a second or two to sort out what it was I was saying, but when he did, to his everlasting credit, he didn't laugh at me and my naïve assumptions.

"That would have been lovely," he said, pulling me back down into the nest of duvets and pillows, wrapping us both up in the soft warmth. "I would have liked for you to be the first, Hughie."

Give me credit here, I didn't ask who had been.

"You're the only person I've ever known who hasn't wanted something from me," he told me as we shifted into a comfortable sleeping position. I felt guilty for feeling pleased and did a bit of penance against my baser instincts.

"Y'can't mean that. What about Karen? What about Keith?"

"It doesn't mean I don't love them, I'll always love them both, but Karen wanted things I can't ever give her, so she went somewhere else to find them. And Keith wanted all the music in me.

That much I knew was true.

"I want things, too," I told him.

"Not in the same way. You're not chipping away bits of me. Hughie, f'god's sake stop trying to convince me of how unworthy you are."

I laughed into his shoulder. "Uhhhh, y'know me too well, Bri."

"Bring me back something from the tour?"

"What would y'like?"

"Surprise me."

Well, in the end I was the one who was surprised. When I got back, the house was on the market and Brian was gone to the States to record a solo album. What little sense that boy had he lost over there, so when he finally did come back to me, I had to put him in a rest home, which is a nice way of sayin' that I had him committed. Thank God the damage he'd managed to do himself wasn't permanent.

It's been a long time since Strange Fruit broke up. We've all changed, but Brian's still a fookin' genius, and still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. He's been what they call "well" for half a dozen years now, and I stay close, runnin' m'antique business so I have some free time to spend with him. He likes gardens, so we drive about viewin' them. Let me tell you it's some wild times we have over fookin' topiary camels.

So says the cynic in me. Truth is, being close to Brian is one of the two joys of my life, the other being music. We muddle along together pretty well, and I do for him what Keith never could, standing guard over him, the wall that holds back the flood. And we've gotten past the transaction part, I think, though I could be kidding m'self. Brian was wrong about me, but I won't ever tell him so; I did want something from him. Still do. I wanted to be the one to keep my lost boy safe.

Sometimes the universe can be generous.


End file.
